Faculty/staff

Rana E. Barar, MPH

Senior Project Director

Rana E. Barar, is Senior Project Director for the Alternative Provision of Medication Abortion Program at ANSIRH. She oversees a range of studies aimed at providing data on the safety and acceptability of alternative methods of provision of medication abortion. Before joining these projects in October 2018, Rana was Project Director for the Turnaway Study for nine years, overseeing site selection, data collection, participant retention and dissemination. Prior to joining ANSIRH, Rana managed the Teen-to-Teen Sexuality Education Project and served as Interim Director at Answer, a leading national organization dedicated to providing and promoting comprehensive sexuality education based at Rutgers University. In that capacity, Rana oversaw publication of Answer's teen publications - Sex, Etc. magazine and Sexetc.org. Rana began her public health career working in international health and human rights and maternal mortality reduction at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and received her MPH there in population and family health. She was Senior Program Officer for the Averting Maternal Death and Disability (AMDD) Program, charged with overall administrative management of the AMDD Program, and served as the Administrative Coordinator for the UN Millennium Project’s Task Force on Maternal and Child Health. In addition to her MPH from Columbia, Rana has a BA in French and Political Science from Drew University. Rana is also a periodic contributor on reproductive health and abortion to Rewire and has appeared on KQED’s Perspectives.

Research projects

The Turnaway Study is a prospective longitudinal study examining the mental health, physical health, and socioeconomic consequences of receiving an abortion compared to carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term. From 2008 to 2010, we recruited from 30 abortion facilities around the country to recruit about 1,000 women who sought abortions, some who received abortions because they presented for care under the gestational limit of the clinic and some who were “turned away” and carried to term because they were past the gestational limit.

Inspired by the success of the Turnaway Study, the goal of this project is to launch a multi-country study to compare the consequences of legal abortion, illegal abortion, and carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term in a variety of settings.

Nearly all women in the United States have used a method of contraception. Most commonly, women use condoms or the pill, but an increasing number choose an Intrauterine Device (IUD) or contraceptive implant. Inconsistent use and discontinuation rates are high for all methods. ANSIRH researchers have found that currently available methods do not have all the features that women say are important to them.